When you love someone, you have to have trust and confidence. Love without trust is not yet love.

When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways - either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength.

Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.

Meditation in the midst of activity is a thousand times superior to meditation in stillness.

Happiness is not about getting what you want, but wanting what you've got.

The Buddha's teaching is not a philosophy or a religion; it is a method of practice.

The heart of the path is quite simple. No need for long explanations. Give up clinging to love and hate, just rest with things as they are.

Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.

Don't take life too seriously. No one gets out alive anyway.

Real peace comes from seeing things as they really are, not as we want them to be.

Conquer anger with non-anger. Conquer evil with good. Conquer stinginess with giving. Conquer deceit with truth.

The stages of insight unfold naturally when mindfulness is continuous. There is no need to desire them or try to make them happen.

The way to change the world is to change your own mind.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

Through understanding emptiness, one does not become proud of one's virtues, just as one does not become proud of building a castle in the sky.

The mind is like a wild monkey, jumping here and there. But through meditation, we learn to see whatever arises in our mind with more spaciousness and clarity.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

The past is just a memory. The future is just a dream. Be here now.

The nature of mind is not something we need to achieve - it's something we need to recognize.

The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds.

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.

When you practice zazen you should not try to attain anything. You should just sit in the complete calmness of your mind and not rely on anything.

Meditation is like a gym in which you develop the powerful mental muscles of calm and insight.

Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.

Nothing is permanent. Everything is subject to change. Being is always becoming.

The truth of Zen is the truth of life, and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect.

The root of suffering is attachment.

Understanding at the intellectual level is not enough. There must be experience at the actual level.

Liberation is not found by running away from our experience but by looking deeply into it.

The true person is not anyone in particular. But like the deep blue color of the limitless sky, it is everyone, everywhere in the world.

Mindfulness is the gentle effort to be continuously present with experience.

Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities.

Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?